Staying hydrated under hot weather is always vital to avoid heat-related sickness. Good hydration becomes even more crucial when performing strenuous walking exercises in high temperatures. Your body needs replacements of fluids as more as you sweat under heat. Let’s discuss about how you could stay hydrated when you walk on summer times.
Listen to your body when it’s thirsty
When you are thirsty, it’s too late to solve the problem as you are already dehydrated. Do not believe this myth, says Tamara Hew-Butler, PhD, associate professor of Sport Science at Wayne State University, Detroit. All the mammals in the wild would be dead if that was true because they drink according to their physical requirement that comes from thirst. In the wild animals have been survived well enough without the help of a timer that reminds them when to drink while grazing.
Some key factors regulate how much hydration you will need like the amount you sweat, your height and weight, the length of your workout and the surrounding temperature. Requirements vary to individuals as the amount of fluid needed is not same for all. Our brains neural networks continuously monitor our body’s water-salt balance and we go for a drink when we receive signals in our brain to do so.
Take other fluid if you want
An hour walk on a hot summer day is not much strenuous that you will have to restore your electrolyte needs with a sports drink. Most of the time, plain normal mineral water does just fine. But in case if you don’t like to drink water much, you could easily replace that with, for examples, a fruit drink or fruit smoothies. The key is to rehydrate with healthy fluids, and the chance is, the nicer it tastes, the more you will likely to drink.
Expect less short break
You should not be deprived of drinking fluids when you feel thirsty as you may be worried that it will leave you to use bathroom more frequently while you are out walking; and that could cause dehydration. In the hot summer days when you sweat a lot, your body stimulates an antidiuretic hormone that limits urine excretion and helps retain water in the kidneys. So the more you are sweating, the less you will feel urge to pee and that’s completely normal.
Start with well-hydrated
You should take plenty of fluids at least half an hour before you go out for a walk. Take your time as to enter ingested water into circulation, your stomach first need to be emptied and absorbed in the intestine properly. Taking water doesn’t mean that your body is restored immediately; expert says it takes around 20 minutes to appear consumed water in the circulation.
Keep a water bottle
As like all, you may drink before leaving home for a walk, but still you should need to re-hydrate while walking in the sun. Keep a big bottle full of water with you in your backpack when you walk to make your thirst satisfied. For most people, according to Dr. M.D. Hoffman, 32 ounce water is common requirement in an hour long walk. If hydrated sufficiently at the beginning of a one hour walk you won’t get thirst much even if you don’t drink while walking. But keeping a water bottle along is always best to cover immediate satisfaction which is a key to proper hydration.
Drink, don’t wear
You get hot when you walk and when you pour water on your head, you become cool. But that does not fulfill what your body requires at all. You may think pouring water on your head will temporarily cool you down but the only way you could rehydrate and cool yourself is drinking plenty of mineral water.
